Mark Your Calendar for June 5th! Together we can #BeatPlasticPollution

World Environment Day is the UN’s most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. Since it began in 1974, it has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries.

“Beat Plastic Pollution”, the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The theme invites us all to consider how we can make changes in our everyday lives to reduce the heavy burden of plastic pollution on our natural places, our wildlife – and our own health. While plastic has many valuable uses, we have become over-reliant on single-use or disposable plastic – with severe environmental consequences.

Did you, each year we use 500 billion plastic bags and we buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute.

Did you know, each year, 13 million tonnes of plastic leak in the ocean; 17 million barrels of oil is used to produce plastic and 100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic.

Did you know 90% of bottled water contains plastic particles; 83% of tap water contains plastic particles; 50% of consumer plastics are single use and 10% of all human-generated waste is plastic

This World Environment Day we are asking you to take a concrete action to #BeatPlasticPollution. Register your #BeatPlasticPollution activity at http://worldenvironmentday.global/en/register-event.

Visit WorldEnvironmentDay.Global and find out how governments, the private sector, and citizens are engaging to #BeatPlasticPollution. Watch this space on 25 May 2018 and take part in the the fun, engaging and participatory #BeatPlasticPollution game. UN Environment is counting on your support to make this #WorldEnvironmentDay a smashing success.